Manager: Fair covered all bases before opening

Monday

Oct 15, 2012 at 12:01 AMOct 15, 2012 at 6:37 PM

Before the Cleveland County Fair opened, officials took all necessary steps to ensure food vendor booths, animals and rides were inspected and certified for optimum health and safety conditions, the fairgrounds manager said Monday afternoon.

Jessica Pickens

Before the Cleveland County Fair opened, officials took all necessary steps to ensure food vendor booths, animals and rides were inspected and certified for optimum health and safety conditions, the fairgrounds manager said Monday afternoon.

The county owns the fairgrounds, but it leases the property to the Cleveland County Fair Association, with stipulations that include the grounds host an annual fair and maintain insurance to cover all liabilities. The fair association maintains a liability insurance policy with Haas and Wilkerson Insurance, a company that insures fairs nationwide, said fairgrounds manager Calvin Hastings.

As of Monday, 18 people in the county and 38 in the region have reported symptoms of E. coli, according to Cleveland County Health Department Director Dorothea Wyant. Health officials say all visited the fair.

“The health department is looking at everything to see where it came from: rides, vendors and animal exhibits,” Hastings said. “All of this breaks my heart and I’ve lost plenty of sleep. It’s hard to predict things like this when you’ve covered all your bases.”

Hand-washing stations

Hastings said the fair operated five animal-petting areas and each was required to operate a hand-washing station. He said the fair offered nine hand-washing stations, each with a sign that read "Please wash your hands."

Five of the stations were owned by the fairgrounds when Hastings became fair manager two and a half years ago, and four were borrowed from the Mountain State Fair in Fletcher. The hand-washing stations were manned by seven or eight volunteers who replenished soap on a rotation, Hastings said.

“Each hand-washing station is sanitized and serviced before the fair,” he said. “They were serviced this week and are now being stored at the fairgrounds.”

But the mother of one child hospitalized from E. coli said at least one of the stations was without soap when she visited the fair.

Jordan McNair was admitted to Levine Children's Hospital on Oct. 5. He's been unconscious due to sedatives used to calm him while he's on a ventilator and 24-hour dialysis.

McNair's mother, Beth, said her son milked a cow at the fair, and the people running that area made sure her son washed his hands.

The family later visited a petting zoo, where McNair said the hand-wash station's soap dispenser was empty.

McNair said her son bites his finger nails, so that could've been a factor in contracting the illness.

Changes for future fairs?

In addition to ongoing treatment for sick fair patrons, people who visited the fairgrounds and didn’t get sick are also being surveyed, Hastings said.

“This is an unusual thing. Some of the folks who came down with E. coli ate, while others didn’t. Some of them went to the petting zoo, while others didn’t,” Hastings said. “We are working with the health department to pull the pieces together.”

Once the investigation is completed and a specific cause of the E. coli outbreak is identified, Hastings said, fair officials will gauge how the fair's health and safety provisions can be improved in coming years.

“We are going to talk to people at the state fair and see what they have done. I hate that it may come to the point where there are animal displays, but no animal petting areas,” he said. “I hate it for the kids and the parents, but we all have to learn to sanitize our hands.”

* The fair association agrees to keep in effect all fire, other causality and business insurance on the buildings and structures located on the premises and personal property. The fair must provide annual evidence of those forms of insurance.

* If the property is destroyed or damaged by earthquake, fires, floods, strikes, riots or insurrections that are beyond the fair's control, the fair's lease will be terminated.

* The county has no liability or responsibility in the operation of the county fair.

* The fair association must operate one county fair each year to maintain its lease on the property.

* The fair's current lease on the county land became effective Jan. 1, 2012, and is effective for 10 years.

Source: County-fair association lease agreement

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